Digital Publishing

Quartz News, a business economy news site has recently launched its new publication called Quartz at Work, which aims to cover business news in the workplace. As Quartz at Work Heather Landy explains, "Each day on Quartz at Work, you’ll find new stories about what we’re most obsessed with, including the delicate art of managing others; tools and tips for increasing your productivity and tapping into your creativity; the progress being made (or not) in workplace inclusion efforts; the design of organizations; and how to be a high achiever and still have a rich personal and family life". Unlike the other media publishers, Quartz has taken the approach of shaping their newsrooms, based on 'phenomenon/trending topics' as opposed to siloing based on categories. According to Similar Web, it reports 29 million monthly visits, so naturally, it extended its formula into vertical publishing given the considerable interest in management and the workplace on a subdomain, as opposed to having it sit in a subfolder like their Africa, India and Index editions. "We know Quartz readers are international, ascendant business professionals. Our observation is that you’re not fully served by most management coverage out there today—it’s almost too traditional or else not sophisticated enough. We created Quartz at Work to fill that gap.", said Heather Landy. Many publishers, including martech solution providers like Hubspot, use subdomains for building new verticals, as it allows them to build topical relevancy (particularly for SEO) on a niche which achieves their strategic objectives, without diluting the main business direction and approach. The inclusion of the contributor model (like Qz for Work has done) with influencers and leading industry professionals results in quicker growth and scaled media publishing. The Quartz team have already shared some of their results which includes shares and mentions from their key target readership such as: GE vice chair Beth Comstock shared a Quartz at Work guide to structuring your workday on LinkedIn, along with her own best practices. She also shared the story on Twitter. Actor Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson tweeted the story on his daily routine, calling it a “motivating read.” He also exchanged tweets with the author, Corinne Purtill. Mike Fucci, chairman of Deloitte’s board encouraged his Twitter followers to check out Quartz at Work: “Found a new source for business news and thought others might be interested.” New America president and CEO Anne-Marie Slaughter shared a story about deciding whether to pause a career to raise a family. Other shares include Hubspot CEO Brian Halligan, Reliance Retail CEO Damodar Mall, Doghead Simulations CMO Amber Osborne, Prime Venture Partners managing partner Amit Somani, and Google’s former head of mobile for India Mahesh Narayanan. IDG Communications CEO Friedenberg outlined some of his thoughts on magazine media business models in 2017 in a piece for MediaPost, saying “Unless you are one of the biggest names in the industry, highly-specialized verticals and niche publishers with a laser-like focus on their audiences have the best chance of survival”. Like the main Quartz website, Quartz at Work will be supported by advertising. The State of Digital Publishing team will follow up in the upcoming months to see how Quartz at Work is progressing and provide you with more definitive results. What do you think about Quartz at Works efforts so far and it’s ambitions in vertical publishing? What would you have done differently? Share your views in the comments section below. Or if you have a news story or tip-off, drop us a line at vahe@stateofdigitalpublishing.com.

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